Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of placing medical insertion instruments inside a body cavity, and more particularly relates to a method of safely placing into a body cavity an endoscope for observing the inside of the body cavity and an illuminator configured separately from the endoscope to emit illumination light for illuminating the inside of the body cavity.
Description of the Related Art
In recent years, endoscopic surgery using a rigid endoscope (rigid mirror) such as an abdominoscope is widely performed since the endoscopic surgery is less invasive to a patient than surgery involving operation such as laparotomy and thoracotomy. For example, in laparoscopic surgery, a cylindrical trocar is pierced into several places on an abdominal region of a patient, and an endoscope (abdominoscope), treatment tools and the like are inserted into an abdominal cavity through the trocar, so that treatment is performed with use of the treatment tools while an endoscope image is observed with a monitor.
Recently, single port surgery (SPS) that is laparoscopic surgery performed with one hole formed on an umbilical region is also rapidly spreading. Since only one postoperative scar is left in an umbilical region in the single port surgery, it is less distinctive, and therefore the surgery is excellent in terms of cosmetics.
However, in the single port surgery, only one opening (insertion hole) is formed on a body wall for access into a body cavity, the endoscope and the treatment tools tend to interfere inside and outside the body cavity, which tends to constrain operation of these tools. When the endoscope and the treatment tools interfere, it may become impossible to position the endoscope at a location convenient for observation, which may hinder observation and treatment of a treatment target region.
Under these circumstances, a demand for reduction in diameter of an insertion portion of the endoscope is increasing. If the diameter of the insertion portion of the endoscope can be reduced, an opening for the endoscope can be downsized even when it is formed in portions other than the umbilical region, so that a postoperative scar can be made less noticeable. Moreover, it becomes possible to solve failures in the aspect of operation and observation as compared with the case of accessing into a body cavity through one opening.
Generally, the endoscope has a function of observing an inside of a body cavity as well as a function of illuminating the inside of the body cavity. More specifically, a light guide for transmitting illumination light from a light source device is inserted to and placed at an insertion portion of the endoscope, and the illumination light emitted from an emitting end of the light guide is made to irradiate the inside of the body cavity through an illumination window. Accordingly, if the insertion portion of the endoscope is made too small, enough occupation space for inserting and placing the light guide is not secured, which causes insufficient brightness of the illumination light.
On the contrary, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 10-137184 discloses a system including an endoscope to observe an inside of a body cavity and an illuminator (illumination probe) configured separately from the endoscope to illuminate the inside of the body cavity. In this system, illumination light from one light source device is dividedly fed to the endoscope and to the illuminator through a light guide cable, so that the illumination light emitted from the endoscope and the illuminator can illuminate the inside of the body cavity.